World Labs

Overview

World Labs is an AI startup founded in January 2024, focused on developing Spatial Intelligence - AI systems that can perceive, generate, reason about, and interact with 3D environments. The company achieved unicorn status approximately 4 months after founding. It emerged from stealth mode in September 2024.

Item	Details
Headquarters	San Francisco, CA
Founded	January 2024
CEO	Fei-Fei Li
Funding	$230M+
Valuation	$1B+ (September 2024)

Founding Team

Co-Founders

Name	Background
Fei-Fei Li	Stanford Professor, ImageNet Creator, Co-director of Human-Centered AI Institute
Justin Johnson	Former University of Michigan Professor, Former Meta AI Research, Stanford CS231n Instructor
Christoph Lassner	Former Meta Reality Labs, Former Epic Games, Developer of Pulsar (Gaussian Splatting foundation)
Ben Mildenhall	Former Google Research, Co-creator of NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields)

Key Investors

Lead Investors:

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
NEA
Radical Ventures

Strategic Investors:

NVentures (Nvidia)
AMD Ventures
Intel Capital
Adobe Ventures
Databricks Ventures
Cisco Investments (November 2025)
Salesforce Ventures

Angel/Individual Investors:

Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO)
Geoffrey Hinton (Former Google AI)
Jeff Dean (Google DeepMind)
Eric Schmidt (Former Google CEO)
Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn Co-founder)
Andrej Karpathy (Former Tesla AI, Former OpenAI)
Ashton Kutcher (Sound Ventures)
Jim Breyer, Ron Conway, Ram Shriram

Core Technology: Spatial Intelligence

What is Spatial Intelligence?

Traditional AI: 2D images/text → 2D outputs

Spatial Intelligence: 2D/3D inputs → 3D world understanding
                     ↓
                     - 3D scene generation
                     - Physics understanding
                     - Spatial reasoning

Applications

Robotics: 3D world understanding for manipulation
Gaming: Procedural 3D world generation
Creative Tools: AI-assisted 3D design
AR/VR: Immersive environment creation

Products

Marble (2025)

First commercial product for 3D world generation:

Launch: Limited beta in September 2025, general availability in November 2025
Text/image/video/panorama prompts → 3D worlds
Physics-aware generation
Chisel Editor: AI-native 3D editing tools
Hybrid 3D Editor: Block out spatial structures, AI fills in visual details
Export to Gaussian splat, mesh, or video formats
Compatible with Vision Pro and Quest 3 VR headsets
Tools for artists, designers, and developers
Freemium subscription model

Funding History

Period	Amount	Notes
2024 (Seed)	-	Initial funding, $200M valuation
2024.09	$230M	Series A, $1B+ valuation, Unicorn status achieved
2025.11	Undisclosed	Cisco Investments strategic investment

Total Funding: $230M+

Connection to Physical AI

World Labs’ Spatial Intelligence is directly relevant to robotics:

3D World Understanding: Essential for robot manipulation
Physics Simulation: Predicting physical interactions
Scene Generation: Training data for robot learning